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InvisibleBridgeburner
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Broken college system lets drug cheats slip through the cracks
    #7653053 - 11/18/07 11:15 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_7482021

When an athlete at the University of Idaho failed a drug test nearly three years ago and became one of the few collegians caught cheating with performance-enhancing drugs, something remarkable happened:
Almost nothing.
He was not publicly identified or ruled ineligible. He was not banned from competition. He was not even suspended.
Instead, he faced only continued periodic testing over the next year, according to school records, and was required to enroll in a university counseling program. The school "encouraged" him to notify his parents.
Outrageous?
Try, unsurprising.

While many colleges and universities spend considerable amounts of time, money and energy on institutional drug-testing programs ostensibly meant to keep the competition fair and the athletes healthy, a Salt Lake Tribune investigation found vast inconsistencies, curious practices and uncertain accountability in the way the nation's major schools at the top-tier Division I-A level administer their programs.
The number of athletes subjected to drug tests, the banned substances for which they are tested, the quality of the testing and the consequences of failed tests vary significantly depending on the sports athletes play, as well as the schools, conferences and states in which they play them, the investigation revealed.
Only five schools - Idaho, Texas, Iowa, Tennessee and East Carolina - reported having caught an athlete using steroids in the past three years. Oklahoma also reported a failed test, but documents show it was the result of a separate conference-testing program.
Meanwhile, some of the nation's largest and most prominent programs, such as Cal, Kentucky and West Virginia, do not systematically test for performance enhancers, relying on the random tests administered by the NCAA itself. But only about 4 percent of athletes can ever expect such a test.
It's possible - perhaps even likely - that most college athletes will go their entire careers without being tested for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. And in an era when any athletic accomplishment can be called into dispute because of the growing taint of such drugs, questions remain about whether doping in college sports is a problem that remains mostly undetected and unpunished.
"That is a fair observation," said Gary Wadler, a New York internist and expert on performance-enhancing drugs in sports.


Inconsistency abounds: By their nature, institutional drug-testing programs are not intended to be airtight sting operations that catch every drug cheat. They are not mandatory and are used primarily to supplement the overarching program administered by the NCAA. Mostly, they attempt to detect illicit "street" drugs such as marijuana, heroin and Ecstasy.
Yet the Idaho case illustrates how differently the programs can affect athletes who otherwise compete at the same level. For example, had the same athlete tested positive at Houston for the same anabolic agents that he did at Idaho, he would have been suspended for one calendar year and lost a year of eligibility.
Had he competed at Nebraska, Illinois or Penn State, among other schools, he would have been subject to an additional layer of drug testing by the conference to which those schools belong. The Big Ten and the Big 12 are the only leagues with their own drug-testing programs.
If he had provided the same urine sample at Washington, he might not have even failed the test.
"It's not as consistent as it should be," said Kevin Ryan, the former U.S. attorney who led the prosecution in the BALCO scandal, which uncovered a vast network of steroid use and implicated some of the world's sports stars.
Charles Yesalis is blunter still. A professor emeritus at Penn State, Yesalis has written books on performance-enhancing drugs and testified on the subject before Congress six times. He said the college testing system is disastrously flawed and needs to be administered openly and independently. Administrators and fans are suffering from denial and apathy if they believe performance-enhancing drugs are not a problem in major college sports, he said.
"It has been ignored at the college level by the same government officials - from the president on down - who have shown some aggressiveness on this matter" at the professional and international levels, Yesalis said.


A patchwork of standards, enforcement levels: To examine the scope and effectiveness of the institutional drug-testing programs, The Tribune requested information from all 119 colleges and universities that sponsor football and compete in Division I-A, as well as from three lower-division universities in Utah. The newspaper solicited the information from public schools through open-records requests, while private institutions were asked to volunteer the same information.
Most of the schools complied to some extent, although 42 (including Brigham Young University) refused to disclose any information at all, citing immunity from public-records laws, privacy prohibitions and, in some cases, the absence of pertinent records. The information provided by the other schools, however, paints a fragmented picture that suggests easy evasion for drug cheats, a lack of reliable oversight and, obviously, inconsistent punishment for those who do get caught.
Few major colleges and universities systematically test their athletes for performance-enhancing steroids, for example, generally leaving that to the NCAA's drug-testing program, and only 16 of the 62 schools that provided their drug-testing policies require an athlete to be suspended from competition the first time he or she tests positive for one of the dozens of substances banned by the NCAA. The rest usually require some combination of counseling and continued testing, including the possibility of suspension or expulsion for subsequent failed tests. Some schools, such as South Florida and Tennessee, automatically suspend athletes who test positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but allow more lenient punishments for those who test positive for street drugs.
Meanwhile, public schools in Washington and Colorado are legally prohibited from random drug-testing by state court decisions that have ruled it unconstitutional (but suspicion-based testing is still allowed). Some schools, such as Connecticut and UTEP, don't even notify an athlete's parents of a first failed test, according to written policies, although other schools regard such notification as a valuable deterrent.
"I don't know about you, but if I had to sit in on a conference call with my dad after smoking marijuana, I wouldn't have to worry about penalties from the university," said head trainer Phil Voorhis of Northern Illinois.
What's more, larger schools such as South Carolina and Florida dedicate as much as $160,000 annually to their drug-testing programs (which usually include education programs to inform athletes about drug abuse and testing programs), while others such as Boise State, Bowling Green and Memphis spend less than $3,000 per year. Most common among those that provided budget information are schools such as Utah and Utah State, which spend between $10,000 and $25,000 each year on drug testing.
"The institution has to decide how it wants to police itself and what image it wants to portray," said Dale Mildenberger, head trainer at Utah State.
Projecting a tough image isn't always paramount, the investigation showed.
Northern Illinois processes its samples initially within its own athletic department using over-the-counter "quick test" kits it buys for $12 each, taking them to a certified hospital lab for a repeat test only if a positive result is detected. New Mexico and Texas Tech said they do not have a specific budget for drug testing. Their testing is paid for out of a general fund for medical costs, and their samples are analyzed at campus medical centers.
Two schools even "trade out" university products in exchange for testing services. Documents show Oklahoma and UNLV traded thousands of dollars worth of season tickets to football and basketball games for drug-testing services.
Such practices are dangerously vulnerable to conflicts of interest, anti-doping experts agree.
"The three words I use all the time . . . are independence, transparency and accountability," said Wadler, the New York expert. "For a system to work, you can't have inherent conflicts of interest."
Still, no regulatory body oversees or monitors the institutional drug-testing programs. The NCAA provides one page of "suggested guidelines" in its annual 18-page drug-testing manual. No mechanism consistently tracks the results (some schools said they don't even keep certain records of their testing). And seldom are there any external audits of the programs. Only Clemson and Iowa said they have audited or written a report on their testing programs since 2003 - and the one at Clemson found problems such as a failure to document the athletes who missed tests, which the school said it would address.
Even the results of the drug tests themselves can vary, depending on the lab at which they're analyzed. An athlete who fails a drug test at Buffalo or Minnesota, for example, could pass with the same urine sample at Washington. That's because documents show the lab the Huskies use requires a higher concentration of certain drugs to trigger a failed test.
"That's why there needs to be some way for the labs and the schools to compare," said Don Catlin, the former director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory who now runs the Anti-Doping Research Institute in Los Angeles. He developed a test for the previously undetectable steroid at the center of the BALCO scandal. "They shouldn't have to go through that kind of stuff."
Yet they do.


Solid progress or just fewer busts? Although The Tribune investigation revealed inconsistencies among the dozens of institutional drug-testing programs across Division I-A, there is no overwhelming sense of ineffectiveness among those who administer them.
In fact, advocates generally believe the institutional programs work well in combination with the NCAA program, which the NCAA said has drastically reduced steroid use among college athletes.
"It's been very successful," said Frank Uryasz, president of the National Center for Drug-Free Sport, which administers the NCAA program and contracts with at least a dozen schools in Division I-A to coordinate their institutional programs. "If you look at steroid-use numbers in college athletics, they peaked in the mid-1980s. The reason they stopped there is because the NCAA implemented its testing program [in 1986]. . . . We've seen a steady decrease in steroid use in that population ever since."
Or at least, a decrease in those getting caught.
According to an NCAA study released last year, 49 college athletes tested positive for steroids in its year-round testing program in the 2004-05 academic year - the NCAA visits each Division I campus for random testing at least once a year - compared with 90 who tested positive in 1998-99.
Only two athletes failed steroid tests in the postseason drug-testing program, in which select athletes are randomly chosen for testing at championship events such as football-bowl games, basketball tournaments, and track or swimming meets. That was down from a high of eight in 1996-97.
Athletes who fail an NCAA test are automatically suspended for a year and lose a year of eligibility.
"The sanction for testing positive is significant," Uryasz said.
That's one reason most schools are comfortable in not systematically testing for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in their institutional programs. Another is that they say it costs too much; steroid tests typically cost $150 each, compared with as little as $15 or $20 for tests that detect common street drugs.
As a result, many schools allow for occasional testing for performance-enhancing drugs, based on "reasonable suspicion" on the part of coaches, trainers or even teammates, or previous failed tests.
"If someone comes back from the summer and it's clear he's put on an unnatural amount of muscle, we'll test him," said Randy Oravetz, the director of sports medicine at Florida State. "But when you have hundreds of athletes, who's doing what is hard to figure out."
To create the plausible threat of getting caught, the programs at Iowa and Kansas mix in steroid tests among the athletes they randomly select to test for street drugs. Athletes at Iowa who test positive for steroids are suspended from competition until they can supply a negative test, a punishment levied by several other schools as well. "At any point, an athlete isn't going to know whether we're testing for steroids or not," said Laura Reed, who administers the drug-testing program at Iowa. "They know it's a possibility."
That kind of uncertainty - especially in regard to the timing of drug tests - is viewed by experts as crucial in creating an effective drug-testing program.
The argument that testing for steroids costs too much "doesn't carry much weight" with Wadler. He argues, and Yesalis and Ryan agree, that cost shouldn't be an issue for Division I-A athletic programs that generate an average of $36.6 million a year, according to an NCAA report based on 2005-06 figures.
"That is the height of silliness," Yesalis said. "I mean, that's almost out of Monty Python."
An analysis of that report by the Sports Business Journal, however, showed 95 of the 117 schools in Division I-A in 2005 lost money on their athletic programs, when subsidies are excluded.
Many athletes are unaware their school is not testing for performance enhancers. Philip Brown, an offensive lineman on the University of Arizona football team in 2003 and 2004, was surprised when a reporter told him the Wildcats did not test for steroids.
"They scared us into thinking to stay away from everything," he said.
Brown said Arizona never randomly tested him but did make him give a urine sample at the start of summer camp.
In any case, the odds that any particular athlete will be subjected to a test in the NCAA program are long - and the timing of possible postseason testing is predictable - challenging the notion advanced by the NCAA that the risk of being tested will seriously deter athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs.


Slipping through the cracks: Many schools said they administer their drug-testing programs primarily to educate their athletes and to protect them from the dangers of banned substances rather than punish them for violations.
"If the drug-testing program keeps one athlete from using, then I feel that it is a success," said Phil Shaw, the assistant athletic director and head trainer at Louisiana-Monroe.
The programs also catch a fair number of athletes using banned substances; mostly those who have smoked marijuana.
But given the usage rate of performance-enhancing drugs at both the professional and high-school levels - a survey by the Centers for Disease Control found in 2005 that 4 percent of high school students nationwide had taken illegal steroids - college drug testing might be letting most users slip through the cracks.
"There's a good guess that it's all through the college ranks," said Victor Naumov, the founder and president of the National Coalition for the Advancement of Drug-Free Athletics, which advocates stronger education about performance-enhancing drugs.
Only five schools reported catching an athlete using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs with its institutional program in the three years for which The Tribune sought records. Tennessee caught one in 2004, it said, while Texas caught two and Idaho one in 2005. East Carolina also caught two, though it did not disclose when, and Iowa reported one or more failed steroid tests in that span, but would not specify how many or when.
That should not come as much of a surprise perhaps.
"If they're not testing for steroids, then they're not going to find anything," said Catlin, of the Anti-Doping Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Oklahoma also reported a failed steroid test, but records show that test was part of the Big 12 Conference's testing program.
Yet administrators nationwide don't seem to be pushing for reform.
The NCAA's Mary Wilfert said she's not aware of any effort to standardize institutional testing programs, although she agrees schools cannot possibly be catching every drug user and that the system as a whole would benefit from more testing.
"We certainly believe that," she said. "But we have to use the resources we have to create the best elements possible" in a drug program. The NCAA spends just over $4 million annually on its drug-testing program, she said. (It took in some $558 million in revenue in 2005-06, according to an NCAA report.)
Even Michigan athletic director William Martin, a former member of the U.S. Olympic Committee board of directors, supports consistent standards among the NCAA, Olympic and professional drug-testing programs but stops short of wanting to bring institutional programs under the same purview.
"I don't think all the schools have the resources to do a very intensive testing model," he said.
What's more, there might not be much point in testing athletes in certain sports - say, field hockey or softball - which lack the high profile and lucrative professional aspirations common to others.
But experts fear that drug cheats flourish amid loose controls. Former U.S. Attorney Ryan wonders whether college administrators are avoiding a tougher stand against performance-enhancing drugs because of the potential economic consequences of staining big-business sports such as football.
"Is everybody kind of looking the other way?" he asked.
Ryan isn't convinced by arguments that college athletes in general are neither sophisticated enough nor motivated enough to seek out performance-enhancing drugs - readily available on the Internet or in neighborhood gyms across the country, and not especially expensive.
"If kids can buy marijuana and they can buy booze, they can buy this stuff," he said.


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Invisiblefastfred
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Re: Broken college system lets drug cheats slip through the cracks [Re: Bridgeburner]
    #7653860 - 11/19/07 08:40 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

This article is bullshit. The university has little or nothing to do with drug testing. The NCAA does the drug testing and anyone who fails is given an automatic 2 year ban.

The only point in colleges testing athletes is to make sure they're going to pass the real NCAA tests.


-FF


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OfflineLeanin
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Re: Broken college system lets drug cheats slip through the cracks [Re: fastfred]
    #7654076 - 11/19/07 10:07 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

fuck drug testing period....


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Offlinepabloescabar
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Re: Broken college system lets drug cheats slip through the cracks [Re: Leanin]
    #7654839 - 11/19/07 01:48 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

It's "broken" because in the end there is no jail time. What's wrong with a counseling program? And who's business is it if you tell your parents that you got caught using steroids? Besides it's only for sports who cares if they use drugs?


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